Sebastian Stan has opened up about playing Donald Trump in a new interview, saying the former President of the United States is “a lot smarter than people want to say about him”.
Stan is playing Trump is the upcoming film The Apprentice, which explores Trump’s life as a businessman in New York in the ‘70s and ‘80s. It received its premiere in May at the Cannes Film Festival, where it received an eight-minute standing ovation.
Speaking to Variety, Stan explained: “I think he’s a lot smarter than people want to say about him…because he repeats things consistently, and he’s given you a brand.”
Stan revealed that he watched many videos of Trump on a loop while preparing for The Apprentice.
“I had 130 videos on his physicality on my phone,” he continued. “And 562 videos that I had pulled with pictures from different time periods — from the ’70s all the way to today — so I could pull out his speech patterns and try to improvise like him.” He was also asked to ab-lib by director Ali Abbasi so had to know many details about Trump and how he would likely respond in certain scenarios.
“Ali could come in on the second take and say, ‘Why don’t you talk a little bit about the taxes and how you don’t want to pay?’ So I had to know what charities they were going to in 1983. Every night I would go home and try not only to prepare for the day that was coming, but also to prepare for where Ali was going to take this.”
Meanwhile, Trump has threatened legal action against the film on account of a scene where it depicts him raping his ex-wife.
A representative of Trump’s campaign team said they will be “filing a lawsuit to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers”.
Steven Cheung told Variety: “This garbage is pure fiction which sensationalises lies that have been long debunked. As with the illegal Biden Trials, this is election interference by Hollywood elites, who know that President Trump will retake the White House and beat their candidate of choice because nothing they have done has worked.”
“This ‘film’ is pure malicious defamation, should not see the light of day, and doesn’t even deserve a place in the straight-to-DVD section of a bargain bin at a soon-to-be-closed discount movie store, it belongs in a dumpster fire,” he added.
The film, directed by Ali Abbasi (Border, Holy Spider), begins with a disclaimer that the events depicted are fictionalised.
Trump is currently campaigning to win the 2024 presidential election.
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